#pine

I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve. ↗

— Albert Schweitzer

#happiness #service #destiny

There are hours for rest, and hours for wakefulness; nights for sobriety and nights for drunkenness—(if only so that possession of the former allows us to discern the latter when we have it; for sad as it is, no human body can be happily drunk all the time). ↗

— Roman Payne

#drunkenness #happiness #payne #rest #roman

But maybe happiness isn't in the choosing. Maybe it's in the fiction, in the pretending: that wherever we have ended up is where we intended to be all along. ↗

— Lauren Oliver

#pretending #fiction

I am not proud, but I am happy; and happiness blinds, I think, more than pride. ↗

— Alexandre Dumas

#pride #pride

Do not look for happiness outside yourself. The awakened seek happiness inside. ↗

— Peter Deunov

#enlightenment #happiness #inner-peace #self-fulfillment #wisdom

I believe that being happy is the only important thing. Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or torturous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive. ↗

— Joanne Harris

#happiness #joanne-harris #torture

We are all doomed to seek our own happiness; we can't help ourselves. We are all, the cruel and the gentle alike, condemned to seeking that happiness in the dark. We use our need as the blind use a walking stick, to determine the safety of every forward step. ↗

— Jesse Browner

#safety

The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Avarice over-rates the difference between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions, is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires. The slightest observation, however, might satisfy him, that, in all the ordinary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally calm, equally cheerful, and equally contented. Some of those situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others: but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice; or to corrupt the future tranquillity of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice. ↗

— Adam Smith

#ethics #happiness #equality

Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it. ↗

— Boethius

#misery #misery

Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy. ↗

— Guillaume Apollinaire

#good #happiness #happy #just #just be